Shredders are well known devices for destroying substrate articles, such as documents, CDs, floppy disks, etc. Typically, users purchase shredders to destroy sensitive articles, such as credit card statements with account information, documents containing company trade secrets, etc.
Typically, a shredder has a shredder mechanism contained within a housing, and the housing has a feed opening enabling substrates to be fed into the shredder mechanism. Often, users feed substrates into the shredding mechanism in stacks, rather than by individual pages. If the user feeds a stack that exceeds the shredding mechanism's maximum capacity (i.e. the maximum stack thickness it can handle), the shredding mechanism may become jammed, forcing the user to reverse the mechanism and feed the substrates in two or more smaller stacks.
The present invention endeavors to provide a shredder with a feature that helps the end user determine whether the stack he/she is feeding is within the shredder mechanism's capacity.